Hundreds of people took to the streets of Israel to protest after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sacked the defense minister on Saturday.
Netanyahu’s plan to overhaul the country’s judicial system led to country-wide protest demonstrations, one of the largest in Israel’s history.
Netanyahu is expected to freeze the judicial reform legislation, according to Jerusalem Post. Israel’s President Isaac Herzog also asked the government to halt the legislation after protests across the country, it reported.
“For the sake of the unity of the people of Israel, for the sake of responsibility, I call on you to stop the legislative process immediately,” Herzog said on Twitter.
Also, Netanyahu’s government survived a no-confidence motion by 59-53 vote, filed by the opposition over its judicial overhaul plan, reported Reuters citing the Knesset speaker.
Ten of thousand people were affected as flights from Israel’s main international airport Tel Aviv have been grounded following a strike, informed Israel’s Airports Authority.
According to reports, doctors, teachers and students also joined the strike called by the country’s largest trade union.
According to Reuters report, the ‘judicial overhaul’ would give the executive control over appointing judges to the Supreme Court and allow the government to override court rulings on the basis of a simple parliamentary majority.
Opposition parties slammed Netanyahu’s religious-nationalist coalition government its decision and called the decision “an attempt to undermine the country’s series of legal checks and balances and a threat to Israel’s democracy”.
